Orange County schools close to desegregation settlement

Orange County school leaders appear close to a settlement with plaintiffs in a historic desegregation case that could free the district from federal court jurisdiction for the first time in nearly 50 years.

The School Board could approve the agreement as early as today.

The agreement would commit the public school district to a series of actions that would address inequalities that the plaintiffs say still exist. That could mean big changes -- including which school-construction projects get higher priority, and possibly where some students would go to school.

The settlement would lift a cloud that has hung over Orange County schools since 1962, when eight black families sued to gain equal access to a system that served white people almost exclusively.

If both sides agree on the final language, it is likely that a federal court judge would grant "unitary status" to Orange County schools, which means the district would have erased all vestiges of the discriminatory practices that had separated blacks from whites in the past.

Orange County school district Attorney Frank Kruppenbacher laid out details of the settlement to school board members in a private two-hour session Monday night. Board members were expected to discuss the settlement in a public meeting this afternoon, but they said they would not comment publicly before then.

Neither would the Rev. Randolph Bracy, president of the Orange County branch of the NAACP.

It's expected, however, that building and renovating schools -- especially historically neglected schools in inner-city Orlando -- could emerge as a key part of the plan. It is possible that a list of construction and renovation projects would be changed to give priority to those schools, which are scheduled for repair in 2016 and beyond.

According to two sources close to the negotiations, the plan also could change a policy that has allowed black students to transfer to predominantly white schools. In the 1960s, such transfers were seen as a way to integrate schools. But today, officials think students are using the practice only as a way to escape poor-performing schools.

The settlement also would set new goals for recruiting and placing minority teachers within the district, the sources said.

The fate of two hot-button issues -- ending cross-town busing and closing small schools -- is not yet clear. But sources said no significant shuffling of attendance lines or new policies of assigning students to different schools was expected.

Finally, a new oversight committee is expected to be formed to ensure Orange school leaders are sticking to their promises during a lengthy monitoring period.

The School Board is expected to vote on the settlement today at a 5:30 p.m. public meeting.

If approved, the plan would be filed with the U.S. District Court in Orlando within days.

With the move, Orange would join 18 other Florida school districts that have been declared unitary since the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case, which declared "separate but equal" education to be unconstitutional. About a dozen others remain under supervision, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

News of the proposed settlement came as a surprise to the original plaintiffs in the 1962 case, who said no one had contacted them.

"I think the order has gone on far too long," said Altamese Pritchett, who signed on to the suit so that her two daughters, Valorie and Gayle, could attend integrated schools as they had done on their father's military bases.

"But no, we never have been integrated fully -- although they made attempts -- and some schools still aren't integrated."

School-desegregation experts agreed.

The settlement, while important, doesn't necessarily mean the district is truly desegregated, said Gary Orfield, direct of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

"That really only means that both sides agree to a policy and process that they believe to be better than a trial," he said. "The Supreme Court has pushed for the termination of cases without requiring real integration."

"In all of the cases we've studied, significant segregation and inequality continues after such a plan."

Orange's leaders, however, say the county's dual-education system has largely ended, not only through changes to its own practices, but also because times have changed.

In the 1960-61 school term, the year before Pritchett and others filed suit, court records show that 83 percent of the district's students were white. The rest were black, and few black students went to school with white students.

Today, the student body in the nation's 10th-largest public-school system has no majority of one race or ethnicity. It is 31 percent white, 28 percent black and 32 percent Hispanic.

Orange's leaders have said they cannot control where people want to live, and no external barriers prevent residents from moving to any neighborhood they choose.

In addition, officials have said the changes they have made are so substantial -- such as adding International Baccalaureate and other attractive academic programs in minority schools -- that access to a high-quality education is available to all children in all parts of the county.

Kruppenbacher and others have acknowledged that problems still exist and more work needs to be done. But the proposed settlement does close the book on a painful era.

In 1962, the NAACP sued the district after it refused to permit Evelyn R. Ellis to attend Boone High. Her father, John, was president of the local NAACP. The group demanded that the School Board assign kids to schools without regard to race, color or creed; assign teachers and principals on the same grounds; abolish attendance zones based on race or color; and end all other practices, such as budgeting that considered race and color.

The court agreed, and the decision kicked off what would become a complex set of court orders through the decades.

At first, the School Board often ignored the order, and at times flouted it. In 1971, for example, School Board members voted to go to jail rather than accept busing for racial balance. Later, members agreed to bus 900 students around the county.

In 1970, during what is known as the "fish bowl" incident, administrators reassigned black teachers to white schools by pulling their names out of glass jars as horrified instructors watched it on television.

That same year, 436 white students failed to show up at Jones High School to protest being zoned to Orlando's historic all-black school.

Over time, the order collected dust, conveniently forgotten until recent School Boards decided to renew the efforts to remove the onerous mandates and restore local control.

Others simply wanted to do the right thing.

The effort picked up steam about 10 years ago. At the behest of the county's only black School Board member, Kat Gordon, the district began evaluating its record in an attempt to convince the courts it had achieved racial balance.

By 2007, Kruppenbacher announced the district was likely six months away from negotiating the settlement with the NAACP.

But negotiations hit several snags.

Last spring, an Orlando Sentinel investigation showed that for years, the district had failed to properly convene a biracial oversight committee that was supposed to be reviewing -- on behalf of the federal court -- any changes the School Board made to student transfers, attendance lines and school locations.

Last fall, the Sentinel also found that Orange's staff had failed to follow through with promises they made to a judge in exchange for permission to end some cross-town busing.

Erika Hobbs can be reached at ehobbs@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6226.